Jeremy Scahill investigates the "War on Terror" by visiting a bunch of countries that are getting destroyed by US imperialism. mostly good, but i do think the camera work was a bit cringy in some scenes like the extreme close up of faces or wasting time showing Scahill in deep contemplation constantly.

I really do recommend this video, because a lot of it is about how liberal Hollywood directors, producers and corporate partners will absolutely flip their shit if they encounter criticism of the message within their productions that wealth/conspicuous consumption = happiness, and it's also about how Glover suing his former boss is the reason SAG prevents directors from fucking over actors in the way Glover got fucked over by Zemeckis during production of the sequel, when the people making the movie literally used a mold of Glover's face created for his old-age makeup from the first movie to steal and reproduce his likeness without his permission in an attempt to convince audiences he'd returned for the second one

was reading about the "burial" of osama and how full of shit the story is, and was baffled as to why the U.S would go to the trouble of pretending they gave the 9/11 guy an islamic burial. but then it struck me in a "no shit" kind of way that half of their puppet states love the guy and it's all a show for them

watched this today and then groaned for 10million years cause the demands then are still the fucking same except without the fucking embargo of liberal feminism ruining everything for actual womens liberation

back to watching tv, this ones an old saudi broadcast about these two "isis twins" who hacked up their parents in riyadh a couple of years ago and in the crime scene footage im going holy shit this is a tacky ass marble Mansion, with massive chandeleres and shit, big wrought iron staircase, at one point theirs a servants trolley - hacking up their parents in their marble mansion, lol

Starting How Yukong Moved the Mountains, (absurdly long) French documentary on China at the end of the Cultural Revolution. Very good stuff so far, though I've only seen the first part about a fishing village. Whole thing is on youtube which is handy

Finally got round to watching Sorry To Bother You. Probably would have enjoyed it a bit more in the cinema but got sick of waiting for it (hasn't come out here yet!) and tbh opportunities to go out are limited these days anyway due to my lifestyle choices.

But anyway, I liked it a lot. It's fairly raw in the way that ambitious low budget first films often are and that works in its favour. I feel like it struggled at times to find the balance between being too obscure and being too on the nose but it mostly got it right. More than anything it was refreshing to see a piece of mainstream art openly fuck with marxism and not lose itself in seriousness or condescension. Good stuff

A non negligible part of the movies success is the creators unimpeachability. boots has been deeply connected to Bay Area activism for decades and has even gone on democracy now and set the record straight about tianamen square. It was awesome to be able to enjoy a Marxist movie without having to worry about reading “sorry to bother you” Creator joins the lineup for Rock Against Maduro or “Boots Riley on the campaign trail with Beto O Rourke” two months later. The fact that the work of an artist like Boots reasonates with so many people even in the imperial core and that you can do so without obscuring your actual positions—as soc Dems love to suggest—is very heartening.

watched Roman J Israel Esq w/ Denzel by the guy who did Nightcrawler, about how the petty-bouj legalist-reformist tendencies within the revolutionary movement, thru a network of state and private support, can outlive the proletarian-nationalist movement. from which it parasitizes its energy, slogans, and moral direction. the main character has a really on-the-nose name, and he snitches on a client, calls the cops on workers building condos, replaces contact with the working class for personal moral purity, and hard-vacillitates. in the last scene, he gives his own boss's bulldog trophy to a confused activist, then is rapidly taken out by some lumpen much closer to the movement. a direct expression of capital, "inspired", figuratively picks up the torch he drops as he dies, for a legalist-reformist lawsuit on plea bargaining. there's a shot of the confused activist working in the background of the bulldog, which she's turned around, so its back is to the movement. the PD fiancee laughed a lot. it's about the law, but could just as easily taken place in the university, many unions, online media, or whatever. good stuff.

The Halloween Best of the Worst didn't have Macaulay Culkin on. Instead the boys shot Makers Mark until Rich Evans left in disgust, Jay became a teenage girl and Mike slid down out of his chair and went to sleep on the floor. This all happens before they finish discussing the first movie and it's their finest hour

Not a dream, not a hoax, not an imaginary tale. They tried drinking hard liquor while talking about a horror movie they all hated and it went so bad so quickly that all they show from that part is a highlight reel of Jay growing increasingly pinku & kawaii as Mike weaves in and out of the frame like a cryptid

Haven't actually watched it recently but was just thinking of how good Barry was. It was marketed as a comedy but is extremely bleak. I feel like it's the closest you're going to get to an accurate portrayal of the troops on US TV. The troop characters range from absolute psychopath to oblivious doofus, and the titular character is irreparably socially broken by his military service through the whole season. You got the usual Brooklyn 9/9 style cop appreciation and mild russo-phobia but a really thoughtful show all things considered.